334 
Editorial. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
July,  1876. 
of  opinion  as  to  the  value  of  new  remedies  and  pharmaceutical  appliances,  and  to 
read  original  papers  upon  subjects  germain  to  the  objects  of  the  College.  The 
report  embraced  also  a  synopsis  of  pharmaceutical  and  chemical  journals  in  this 
country  and  Europe. 
The  recommendations  were  adopted. 
Mr.  Becker  also  read  a  very  able  paper  on  salicylic  acid.    (See  page  306.) 
The  Committee  on  Weights  and  Measures  recommended  that  Congress  be  peti- 
tioned to  require  the  use  of  the  metrical  system  in  Government  departments. 
Letters  were  read  from  Profs.  E.  T.  Fristoe,  A.  M.  Read  and  R.  Oldberg,  accept- 
ing the  chairs  of  Chemistry,  Pharmacy,  Materia  Medica  and  Botany,  to  which  they 
were  elected  at  a  previous  meeting. 
A  copy  (2  vols.)  of  the  "  Medical  Statistics  of  the  Provost  Marshal-General's 
Bureau"  was  received  from  Dr.  J.  H.  Baxter.  The  Secretary  was  directed  to 
acknowledge  the  same,  and  express  the  thanks  of  the  College. 
EDITORIAL  DEPARTMENT. 
Solubility  of  Ready-made  Pills. — The  March  and  April  numbers  of  this 
journal  contained  several  papers  on  this  subject,  in  which  the  relative  merits  of 
pills  made  in  the  usual  manner  with  an  excipient,  or  subsequently  sugar-coated  or 
made  by  compression  have  been  discussed.  Since  then  we  have  received  a  paper 
from  Mr.  R.  V.  Mattison,  who  is  a  manufacturer  of  gelatin-coated  pills,  and  speaks 
a  word  in  favor  of  these  specialties.  We  consider  it  inexpedient  to  print  the  entire 
paper,  since  it  rehearses  portions  of  the  former  ones,  and  shall  therefore  give  a  brief 
abstract  of  his  arguments. 
Mr.  Mattison  first  objects  to  the  expression  of  "gelatin-coated  or  more  properly 
speaking,  g/z^-coated, "  used  by  one  of  the  writers  ;  admitting  that  practically  one 
is  merely  a  refined  form  of  the  other,  he  asks  :  "  Was  it  necessary  to  appeal  to  the 
prejudices  of  the  readers,  and  is  there  not  commercially  such  a  thing  as  glue, 
and  also  such  an  article  as  gelatin  ?"  The  proper  pharmaceutical  association  of  the 
terms,  he  regards  as  widely  different.  Admitting  that  the  gelatin-coated  pills  "  swell 
up,"  he  contends  that  thereby  jelly  is  formed,  which  in  the  natural  course  of  diges- 
tion is  readily  disintegrated.  A?  a  simple  means  of  testing  the  solubility  of  these 
and  other  kinds  of  pills,  Mr.  Mattison  suggests  to  place  them  upon  the  tongue,  and 
moisten  them  with  saliva,  imitating  as  far  as  possible  the  action  of  the  stomach ; 
manipulating  in  this  manner  with  sixteen  varieties  of  pills,  he  found  the  average 
duration  of  time  that  the  gelatin  coating  was  in  dissolving,  to  be  seventy-five 
seconds,  the  shortest  being  fifty-five  and  the  longest  time  ninety  seconds,  when  the 
pills  were  removed  from  the  mouth  owing  to  the  disagreeable  taste  developed. 
Our  readers  may  repeat  the  experiments  by  the  several  methods  suggested,  and  in 
doing  so,  the  different  pills  should  be  placed  under  precisely  similar  conditions.  In 
our  opinion,  rapidity  of  solution  is  attainable  with  pills  only,  when  all  the  material 
composing  them  is  freely  and  readily  soluble  ;  in  the  majority  of  cases,  when  a 
rapid  action  is  desired,  the  physician  will  have  to  prescribe  the  medicine  in  the  form 
